INTRODUCTION

For a website to be competitive in today's markets, good design is not enough. Crucially, the site must be easily found. This means the website must be positioned well in search engines. Not being listed in the first thirty results is like not being listed at all.
Optimization is more than search engine ratings. Analysis of visitor behavior gives our team the insights necessary to provide strong strategic recommendations to the webmaster on visitor retention and alternative marketing methods tailored to the individual business, site and clientele.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION AND PERFORMANCE MONITORING PROCESS

Here is a basic outline of what Website Optimization and Performance Monitoring Position involves with short descriptions for each part:

Customer Research
Research into a site’s function and aims is carried out. This gives an idea of how potential viewers would try to find information the site provides and helps plan keywords, titles and descriptions to be targeted.

Customer Competitor Research
Research into main competitor sites is also undertaken to understand why they are doing well. With this information, the customer site can be improved beyond the competitor site.

Titles, Descriptions and Keyword Development
Titles and descriptions are written for each page of the site based on a list of keywords.

Basic Site Optimization
A site is given a basic optimization. This involves a ‘cleanup’ and improvement to the HTML source code. Basic optimization makes it easier for search engines and directories to extract relevant information from the HTML so that higher ranking is achieved.

Search Engine / Directory Submission
Important pages from the site are SUBMITTED BY HAND! This takes longer than automatic submission. This is worth it because search engines will index a site more quickly if it is submitted by hand rather than using automated methods. Search engines have also decided to make it more difficult to submit to them automatically because they want to reduce the amount of irrelevant pages appearing in their index.

Information Page Creation
Highly epitomized ‘information pages’ (mini-pages) are built to target important keywords and direct the viewer to the main site. These information pages have a better chance of gaining high placements in some search engines.

Site Tracking
All pages from the site (including information pages) are continuously tracked for their performance. Search engine placements, visitors, referring sites, page views and other factors are also analyzed so that strategies for further improvements can be implemented.

Customer Reports
Bimonthly reports are written for the customer detailing what has been done for the site. The customer is informed on the performance of the site together with how the site will be improved on in future and suggestions for going forward.

Continuous Optimization
Web site optimization is an ongoing process because search engines are always changing. Their index changes, i.e. the competition changes, and so does the way they operate. This means that once a good position is gained, it needs to be retained by constant monitoring and optimizing.